VIDEO: Josh Barnett “I Am A Fighter” Promo

Strikeforce heavyweight Josh Barnett is one of the best MMA fighters on the planet. Barnett has lingered around the top of the heavyweight division since his career began back in 1997, and still to this day is one of the best fighters in the weight class. The former UFC heavyweight champion was featured in a promo video by Showtime Sports titled, “I Am a Fighter”.

Barnett explains in the video how and why he got into competing in the sport and says that if he wasn’t an MMA fighter he would do something else along the same lines as he is “meant for combat”.

“My name is Josh Barnett and I am from Seattle, Washington. Even when I was a little child, I fought kids that were older or bigger, I never quit – even if somebody got the best of me, I didn’t stop and they ended up quitting. I don’t care how many licks you get in on me, I will get mine. That was just a mentality that most people didn’t possess, plus I have a mean streak that a lot of people didn’t have either. I did see UFC 2 as a sophomore in high school, and I did say, ‘One day, I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I will do that some day, this is for me’.”

“I started off trying to put together a muay-thai club, eventually I’m like ‘I need to find something else’, so I started wrestling with the kids at the Judo club and annihilating them. An old wrestling coach says ‘Hey, I know you’re training, I know you’re doing this MMA stuff’ and so on and so forth, ‘How would you like to fight?’. That’s all it took for me. I got that first fight in and I choked him out in like two minutes. And after winning it was a huge high and huge rush and I was going, ‘I need to get more of this’.”

“I wanted to go somewhere where there would be more of a fight environment so I transferred back to Seattle, started living at home again, started training at AMC Pankration in Kirkland. I love what I do for a living and I don’t want to do anything else. I am meant to be a fighter. If MMA wasn’t around, maybe I’d be a boxer, maybe I’d be in the military, but I was meant for combat. I’m Josh Barnett, and I am a fighter.”

Barnett meets Daniel Cormier for the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix tournament championship on May 19 at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, CA.